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DIMITAR ANAKIEV AT THE TOMBSTONE KRAJ NADGROBNIKA DIMITAR ANAKIEV AT THE TOMBSTONE KRAJ NADGROBNIKA HAIKU ILLUSTRATIONS BY DRAGAN PERIC´ RED MOON PRESS 2002 FOREWORD The 23 poems collected in At the Tombstone were written in the summer and autumn of 2001 in the village of Groznatovci which is located in the foothills near Mount Gromada (local name Vrtop) on the border between Serbia and Bulgaria. I spent my idyllic youth in this natural wilderness where my father was born and ultimately buried. This collection is dedicated to him, as well as to the Balkan tradition which is still alive and well. The pagan and animistic spirit of these people, living outside the ken of modern civilization and deeply connected to their mythology and to nature, interwoven with the spiritu- ality they find in the Orthodox Church, and mixed with the remnants of Turkish customs left behind from the times of the Ottoman occupation, were strong and continual stimuli to me. The classical haiku form of 5-7-5 syllables seemed to me nec- essary to express such complex feelings, both epic and lyric, as well as providing the structure wherein I could make us of local topics, both seasonal and non-seasonal. I began my investigation of the Balkan’s cultural topics for potential application in poetry in 1995, supported through the work and personal help of Hiroshi Yamasaki Vukelic and Srba Mitrovic, and have continued it through col- laboration´ with Ban’ya Natsuishi.´ It pleases me to be able to share some Balkan topics here with an English readership, and for this I must thank Jim Kacian for his willingness to follow the poetic and cultural ethos specific to these Balkan poems in his excellent English translations. The poems were originally written in the Serbian lan- guage. We have chosen against presentation of them in the cyrillic alphabet to facilitate a more transparent communica- tion of the original for the English reader. Finally I am grateful to my long time friend Dragan Peric for his wonderful drawings which perfectly present the spirit´ of the area and this work. Dimitar Anakiev Tolmin, May 5th, 2002 AT THE TOMBSTONE KRAJ NADGROBNIKA St. Prokopie’s Day— with my father’s final breath we gather to grieve. Prokopiev dan. Otac nas sve prikupi zadnjim izdahom. Summer funeral— border stones of my village sunk deep in the earth Pokop u leto. Jos dublje ukopane seoske medje. On Great Lady Day Yellow stag beetles kerchiefed women climb the hill within this ritual house keening and praying of wattle and daub. ˆ ˆ Gospojinovo. Zuti jelenak. ˆ Pod planinom naricu Klimavu bondrucaru crne marame. smrt posetila. Alteration Day— father now gone, it is I who feels the earth change. Otac preminu, do zemljeˆ sad sam prvi. Preobrazenje. Drop of well water— the gravediggers unearthing my ancestors’ bones. ˆ Kap studencice.ˆ Grobari iskopase pradedovu kost. Village burial— Summer emptiness— stories as long as the day my father’s final counsel we tell all day long. given through his death. ˆ Seoski pogreb. ˆ Letnja praznina. Preostale su price Otac smrcu´ izrice duge kao dan. poslednji nauk. Dusty procession— Dad takes with him to the tomb all of the side roads. Suv seoski put. U grob otac ponese sve stranputice. “May God bless your faith!” Out of the granddaughter’s mouth the grandfather’s voice. “Alal ti vera”— iz unikinih usta ded progovara. The whole of summer The old country jug— I neither praise nor reproach— father now drunk on the heat my father now dead. he finds in heaven. Od ovog leta Stara tepsija. ni pohvala, ni prekor: Otac se sad opija otac preminu. nebeskom jarom. My idyllic youth given back to my father— summer burial. ˆ ˆ Carstvo decacko ˆ nebesko posta—ocev pokop u leto. Reminiscences . father’s cheerful voice echoes over the earth-tile. Po ceremidi´ vedar glas odjekuje pokojnog oca. Hillside tumulus— Great Lady Day fast— entangled in the briars we gather the salt of life both virtue and sin. from the oldest graves. Vrlina, greh Uˆ grobovima u trnje upleteni: ziva so nakupljena. seosko groblje. Gospojinski post. A summer star fades in the lightening dawn sky— my father now dead. Na letnjem nebu zvezda se jedna gasi: pokojni otac. An unreal flower placed at the foot of the hill— a newly-dug grave. Nestvaran li cvet na obroncima cveta. Nov grob iskopan. A departed soul Silvered by moonlight, wanders from new moon to full— the clatter of a cowbell— death of my father. remembering Dad. ˆ ˆ ˆ Od mladine do Na mesecini ˆ ustapa, dusa plovi kravlje zvono cangrlja. pokojnog oca. Setih se oca. Wafting by the grave the scent of eternity— a sprig of dried thyme. ˆ Kraj nadgrobnikaˆ ˆ otkos majcineˆ dusice. Mirise vecnost. A late autumn day— this mouldy unleavened bread from my father’s tomb. Jesenjeg danaˆ budjavaˆ pogaca sa ocevog groba. Burying my Dad— in my bachelor’s quarters death has become fixed. Pokopah ˆ oca. U momackoj sobi se usedela smrt. 42 Notes to Kraj Nadgrobnika 8. Letnja praznina (“Summer emptiness”). Emptiness here marks both the emotional waste following the poet's father’s death, and the stillness of a hot afternoon of the European South. The great questions about life and death are the only thing that fill this wasteland as the last lesson from the dead. 1. Prokopievdan (“St. Prokopie’s day”). Prokopie, a saint honored in the Orthodox church, is the Greek name for a Roman soldier named Neanie martyred as a Christian in 303 A.D. “Prokopie” 9. Parents are expected to know the only and best way for their children, but the time comes means “One who succeeds”. “St. Prokopie’s Day” is a summer church holiday. As Prokopie is when a dusty procession is the only way left. This indicates the final moral lesson taught by the patron of the town of Nis, it recalls for the poet his youth spent in this town in southeast- the parent, the only way through one’s life without the distractions of the “side ways”. ern Serbia. 10. Alal ti vera (“May God bless your faith”). A common saying expressing one’s faith. The 2. People of the Balkans’ mountain villages usually mark their property by phrase originated over the 500 years of Turkish occupation of the Balkans, when maintaining interring stones deep into the ground. New borders are superficially buried one’s faith in Christianity was difficult and important to the people; so it is a prayer to resist and loose, old ones are more deeply buried. There is some similarity between conversion to Islam. Interestingly it expresses this desire by using the Arabic word halal (“bless”) tombstones and borderstones. which was borrowed from the Islamic occupier. The phrase condenses nicely the fighting men- tality of the small Balkan nations and their everyday concern to survive under foreign domina- 3. Gospojinovo (“Great Lady Day”). This is a people’s and Orthodox church holiday of early tion, evoking in a short span and through a common greeting much of the history of the autumn, honoring a mythological creature, undeniably pagan, which has latterly been reinter- region. preted by the church as Mother Mary. 12. Stara testija (“The old country jug”). An oval clay jug used for water or brandy, it is usually 4. Bondrucara is a term of German origin for Turkish style village house of decorated with motifs from folk mythology and suggests the pure and primitive aspects of a “wattle and daub” in the Balkans, typical of the mountain villages of Serbia, people living in modern circumstances. Bulgaria and Macedonia. 14. Ceremida or Ceramida (“earth-tile”). A Turkish word for home-made tile. It evokes an idyllic 5. Preobrazenje (“Alteration Day”). This pagan holiday marks "the alteration of woods and country life where everything is made by some member of the domestic circle of one’s family. water—the leaves get the first yellow colour and water becomes cold", so read the first day of autumn (August 19, in the Serbian People’s Calendar). The Orthodox Church has celebrated 16. Gospojinski post (“Great Lady Day fast”). A major religious fast of the Orthodox Church in this day as well since the 7th century (the Catholic church marks it since the 15th century, after early autumn. The poem utilizes the biblical metaphor of salt but in a pagan way as praise for the Crusaders defeated Turkish forces in the battle for Belgrade in 1457). In the Christian the ancestors. interpretation, Alteration Day glorifies the Transfiguration of Jesus. The term also marks a personal change in the poet—the alteration following the poet’s father’s death—as well as the 21. Majcina dusica (“thyme”). In some languages of the Central and Eastern Balkans (Serbian, natural procession of the seasons. Bulgarian, Macedonian) thyme is called “Mother soul” (Majcina dusica). The poet’s father’s grave is encircled by “mother soul” and her eternal scent. 6. Different generations of people of one family are buried one atop another. Gravediggers sometimes find the old bones of ancestors. Well water also comes 22. In the Orthodox rite, a death is followed by a ritual feeding for 40 days. In from the depths of the earth, and includes some of ancestor’s spirit. Its cold- this time people place food upon the new grave. Wine, as the symbol of Jesus’ ness is refreshing in the heat of summer. blood, is used to soak the bread. But people of the Balkan’s villages takes the food from the grave back to their home when the ritual feeding is completed.

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